Duo’s Dutch courage sees play make boards

DUTCH theatre makers Malou van Sluis and Denise Lukkenaer give new meaning to the adage: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Determined to stage their drama Dancing on Your Grave at this year’s Musho festival in Durban, they made it to the fest on a shoestring budget.

After they wrote a proposal and were invited to the festival in October, they tried to get funding through Dutch culture funds, but failed. Persevering, the two resorted to what seems to be the modern solution for almost everything these days – social networks.

Lukkenaer explained: “For various reasons we weren’t able to meet the standards required to receive funding. With 10 days left to give the Musho festival organisers a final answer on whether we were able to make it or not, we weren’t ready to give up and decided to start a last-minute ‘crowd-funding’ action.

“There are online platforms online by which you can present your project. Crowd-funding basically means a lot of people contribute a small amount of money to realise one goal.”

They e-mailed their project’s website link to a network of friends, family and companies at which they had done internships and received support from many.

“A real humbling experience,” said Lukkenaer.

Lukkenaer first became involved with Musho in 2010 when she did a three-year internship at Twist Theatre Development Projects (a course that focuses on the development of six community art groups in Kwazulu-natal).

The third-year student in theatre and education at the School of the Arts in Utrecht, Holland, also works on the website and communication systems for Twist.

“This is my third time coming to SA. After I was here in 2010, SA stole a piece of my heart and I think this country will always remain part of my life.

“For Ferry Spigt (director) and Malou (co-creator/actress), it is their first time here, so they are experiencing a different, exciting, sometimes complicated new world. If we could be part of the Musho festival in the future that would be great,” she said.

Dancing on Your Grave was the final directing project for Spigt, Lukkenaer and Van Sluis, who studied together at the School of the Arts in Utrecht.

The play was invited to perform at the Festival International de Théâtre in Morocco, Casablanca, in September where it won the Best Production and Best Actress awards.

Elaborating on the play – a family drama with comic elements that deals with mourning, death and the role of family in people’s lives – Lukkenaer said Spigt had always been fascinated by the façade people put up, pretending that things are okay when they are not.

“When does this façade break, and what happens after that? For this play he was inspired by issues like you don’t pick your family, or what if people can’t get along, but are still stuck with each other because family ties are just something you can’t cut loose? So, family ties and keeping up appearances were the first themes Ferry started working from.

“After choosing the funeral setting it really became about the pain and struggle that comes along while dealing with a family death. The two characters’ different approach in dealing with this mourning is what makes the play interesting and layered,” she said.

Lukkenaer said the audience would be able to relate to these issues: “The funeral shown is very Dutch in a way – we try not to show our emotions, we don’t feel free to sing, dance and cry. So in that way it shows a very different picture.

“But as far as the themes go, there are a lot of young people in SA who’ve dealt with death around them, probably way more than a lot of Dutch young people. We don’t know how they get through that, and that’s exactly what we hope the play will help to find out.

“We hope it opens a conversation where people can exchange their stories.”